“Wag the Tail”
What`s with the tail and the dog, you may ask. That`s the question covered in the movie I watched tonight — “Wag the Tail”.
The movie was shot in 1997 but NOTHING has changed since that time! The president is accused of sexual harassment with a woman and his spin doctors (those who create propaganda for political figures) arrange a huge play about the war in Albania to distract people`s attention from the scandal right before the elections.
The movie is hilarious! In the beginning, I was treating it seriously, but gradually I realized that it is a tremendous satire on the government in the USA. Though the plot is fictional and exaggerated, I`ll have seconds thoughts watching some political ads after this. This satire surely has grounds.
The movie represents the life of the Americans as it is, with its cultural realities, political system, values and beliefs. They joke a lot about this all, showing the controversial side of this country all created by its citizens.
I`m wondering at the Americans again and again. They feel so strongly about their country, their president and the equality of people, however, they create such movies that mock this all extremely! “This is the politics at its finest,” they say. Wow.
I`m glad we were given this movie to watch. It complements my view on American politics and lifestyle in general.
By the by, the movie was released one month before the Lewinsky scandal.
Every time there`s a new scandal featuring sexual harassment of something like this I`ll have a picture of a tail wagging the dog in my head. Yeah, that`s the secret side of all the politics: it`s not the dog that controls the little tail, but vice versa.
“Why does the dog wag its tail?
Because a dog is smarter than its tail.
If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog”
Some new words and expressions from the movie are:
Face the music — to accept and deal with criticism or punishment for something you have done
A backlash — a strong negative reaction by a large number of people, for example to something that has recently changed in society
You can talk a dog off a meat truck — this phrase means that you are very persuasive
CIA — stands for Central Intelligence Agency, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the Federal government of the United States, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world
It`s corny — not original; used too often to be interesting or to sound sincere
Knock on wood — used when you have just mentioned some way in which you have been lucky in the past, to avoid bringing bad luck
